Mandate, the trade union that represents Irish racecourse officials, hasraised the stakes in its dispute with the Irish Turf Club by calling for a strike to start on the day of the last major ­meeting in ­Ireland before the Cheltenham Festival.

Mandate represents the 32 members of the Irish Turf Club officials association, including stewarding and integrity staff whose presence is essential if racing is to take place. They are in dispute with the Turf Club over proposed cuts to wage and integrity budgets for 2010, which in turn followed a significant cut in the ­funding that the sport receives from the Irish Government.

The meetings under most immediate threat include the card at Leopardstown on 28 February, the last at the course before Cheltenham in March, when by tradition many of the Irish contenders for the jumps season's showpiece event work on the track after racing.

"The strike may affect several events on the Irish horse racing calendar ­including Clonmel and Leopardstown, but we want to be quite clear in stating that the officials do not want to go on strike and would much prefer to resolve the dispute as quickly as possible," Mandy Kane, the divisional organiser for ­Mandate, said. "We have already requested that the Turf Club join us in our ­endeavour to resolve the dispute by attending the labour court in the interests of their employees and the horse-racing public, before any ­unnecessary damage is done to Irish horse-racing's ­credibility. Yet despite receiving funds from Irish ­taxpayers, the Turf Club is refusing to use the state machinery for resolving ­industrial-relations disputes."

Mandate believes that the Turf Club's proposals mean that "the vast ­majority of officials will see an ­approximate 36.5% cut in income" if the plans go ahead.

"You simply cannot go about business in the way the Turf Club have," Kane said. "They have already unilaterally imposed income cuts on our members and are now attempting to impose further cuts which will have a devastating effect, not only on our members and their families' standards of living, but also on the integrity of the horse-racing industry in Ireland."

Denis Egan, the Turf Club's chief ­executive, claimed that ­Mandate's claims are misguided. "They have manufactured a figure which basically includes a national wage agreement that is dead and gone," he said.

"It is based on working 150 days a year. If the officials work the same number of days [in 2010] as last year, their actual earnings would be reduced by 7.25%, and everybody [including senior executives] has taken the cut.

"We will respond to this formally, but at the moment I have only seen the union's press release. Somehow this will have to be worked out.

"Our budget has been cut by ¤1.5m (around £1.31m) in the last two years, and 77% of our costs are staff-related. We have to live within our budget, there is no other option, and if we are going to make savings, there's only one place they can come from."